Hole in the Sky

PROLOGUE

On November 2, 2028, during KLM Flight 3851 from Paris to New York City, an eighteen-year-old Ethiopian soccer player named Worku Roba complained of a mild headache, which he attributed to pressure changes in the Boeing 747 cabin. The flight attendant brought him an aspirin and a bottle of mango juice.

Roba and his teammates were scheduled to play an indoor exhibition game the next day at the Meadowlands. This was their first visit to the United States.

Shortly before the plane landed at JFK, Roba began coughing. He reassured his teammates that it was nothing, just a bit of peanut caught in his throat.

Between the time he disembarked and the time he checked into his room at the Omni Central Park Hotel, it is estimated that Roba came into contact with thirty-four other people.

At three o’clock the next morning, Roba’s roommate made a frantic call to the front desk, shouting, My friend is coughing blood!

At 3:47 A.M., Roba was checked into the emergency room at Bellevue Hospital. Seventeen hours later, his ravaged lungs ceased to function, and Worku Roba was pronounced dead.

Four days after Roba’s death, the entire Ethiopian soccer team and everyone else on Flight 3851 came down with a similar flulike illness, as did several airport employees, the taxi driver who had transported Roba to the Omni Central, seven of the hotel staff, six nurses, three doctors, and nine patients from Bellevue, and a panhandler who had asked Roba for a quarter.

All of them died.

The mutant virus was cataloged as influenza D/Ethiopia/28 (H43N32) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. Within the CDC, the new disease was dubbed Grunseth’s Flu, after the first researcher to die of the virus. On the streets of NewYork City, where, within two weeks, more than seven hundred thousand people were infected, it was more commonly called the Ethiopian Flu.

In Ethiopia, where the disease had been killing people for several weeks, it became known as the Somali Flu, because it was believed to have been brought into their country by Somali refugees. In Somalia it was called the Chinese Flu, because the first televised warnings to the populace were delivered by the Chinese doctor who ran the government hospital in Muqdisho. In China, the sickness was rumored to have been brought on by a clandestine biological weapons assault, and was named the American Flu.

Every country had its own name for the pandemic, but all agreed on one thing—the disease was more virulent and deadly than any the world had known. Long before they realized they were ill, victims of the disease became highly contagious, spreading the virus with every handshake, every kiss, every breath. The first symptom was usually a dull, throbbing headache, followed by a nagging cough. Within a day or two the virus would settle deep in the lungs, producing a form of hemorrhagic pneumonia. Once the victim began to cough up blood, death inevitably followed.

That first winter, more than five billion people died.

Another nine hundred million people died the following winter and, late in 2031, a third wave of Grunseth’s Flu took another seventy million people. By that time, Earth’s human population had spread out thin enough to prevent any major outbreaks. Still, the Flu continued to be a threat, especially in larger communities. When it did strike, rapid and ruthless quarantining procedures were employed, reducing the contagion rate. Dogs, pigs, and ducks, all believed to carry the virus, were shot on sight. Because contact with strangers carried considerable risk, many communities barricaded themselves, posting guards who were quick to challenge anyone who approached their positions.

No single community, however, could be 100 percent self-sufficient. Trade between groups continued, and elaborate methods for safe trading were developed. Bartering was carried out in large, open areas where the traders were required to remain at least fifty feet away from one another. Trade goods were left in the open for a full twelve hours, the length of time the virus was believed to survive outside of a human host. A simple trade—say, a half ton of wheat flour for a working John Deere tractor—could take a full day, and might involve several armed and suspicious men.

A more common and efficient form of safe trading was through the use of Survivors.

On average, for every two thousand people who contract Grunseth’s Flu, only one will survive. These individuals, known as Survivors, do not develop hemorrhagic pneumonia but, instead, suffer a form of post-infectious encephalitis, which often results in some degree of blindness, deafness, or loss of the sense of smell.

Survivors who suffer only the loss of their senses are the lucky ones.

Many Survivors are left with impaired mental functions—slowness of thought, severe depression, and delusional thinking are common. Approximately 8 percent of these Survivors become violent and/or suicidal.

Nearly all Survivors were between the ages of eleven and eighteen when they contracted the Flu. Without exception, Survivors lose their body hair, including their eyebrows. It has been suggested that those who survive the Flu do so because they carry a rare but widespread mutation, a theory which remains unproven but popular with today’s scientfic community.

As of this writing there are an estimated 1.3 million Survivors worldwide. One hundred thousand of them live in North America. Fewer than half of those are able to care for themselves.

Survivors continue to hold a special status in post-Flu North America. Because they have developed immunity, they cannot spread the disease. Survivors can travel from place to place without endangering others, and are often used in trade situations. Survivors are valuable, but they are also envied and sometimes resented by those still vulnerable to the ravages of the Flu. As a result, some higher-functioning Survivors have banded together into their own communities, notably in the southwestern United States, where one small band of renegade Survivors known as the Kinka are said to have actually attacked neighboring communities.

By 2036 the decline in Earth’s population had slowed to a net loss of approximately 3 percent per year. As of this writing, the estimated world population stands at thirty-eight million, an average of one person per square mile of livable land, most of them residing in scattered communities of one hundred people or fewer. The Flu continues to take lives, with new outbreaks occurring every few weeks, as the search for a vaccine enters its second decade.

—from A Recent History of the Human Race by P. D. Boggs © 2038

PART ONE:

CEEJ

TIM

I STAND AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD.

Between me and the north rim lies twenty miles of space and a billion years of rock. I have lived here for more than half my life, but I still get this feeling in my gut. The canyon fills me with emptiness. Wind whips up the canyon walls, inflating my lungs, cool and clean, scented with juniper and pine. Below, I see layers of limestone, shale, granite. Red, green, gray, and a thousand shades of brown.

The wind shifts and pushes me toward the abyss, the canyon beckoning, drawing me toward its gaping maw. The longer I stare into this vast chasm, the more unreal it becomes, like a postcard or a dream. The north rim seems closer now. I could reach out a hand and touch it. I could step off into space and find beneath my feet an invisible walkway, a bridge of thought. I feel its pull.

Ceej!

I blink, startled. The panorama before me wavers, and I take a step back.

Get your butt over here with that brush!

I look down at the brush in my hand, then back at Uncle and the mules. He is working on Frosty, brushing her down, checking for ticks. Cecil, our other mule, is watching me, waiting for his turn. Cecil and Frosty are brother and sister. They were born sixteen years ago, the same as me. They are the last surviving Grand Canyon mules, part of a herd that once carried tens of thousands of tourists up and down the Bright Angel Trail, from the luxury of the El Tovar Hotel to the crude stone cabins of Phantom Ranch.

Now they have only me, and Uncle, and my sister, Harryette.

I begin to groom Cecil, beginning with the backs of his huge, hairy ears. They make me think of Tim.

I met Tim when we were just little kids, and the first thing I noticed was how far his ears stuck out. Like a mule looking at you. Later, Uncle told me, the rest of him would catch up.

Take my nose, Uncle said. When I was a boy I used to worry my nose was too big. But then I grew up and everything sort of fell into place.

Uncle had one of the hugest noses I ever saw, but I didn’t say anything. When you only have an uncle like Uncle and a big sister like Harryette, you learn to keep your trap shut.

Tim’s ears were not only big, they worked good, too. He could hear anything. One time I found him watching a bunch of ants dragging a green caterpillar up the side of a stump. Listen, he said. Tim was my best and only friend.

When I first met Tim we were both eight years old. Harryette and I had been living at the south rim of the Grand Canyon for a few months. One day I was helping Uncle mend the corral fence and I heard the distant putter of an engine. Uncle, whose ears weren’t so good, heard it a second after me.

Defense, Uncle said. We ran back to ElTovar, the hotel where we lived. Uncle grabbed the 30-30 carbine and took up his station on the porch, just outside the double doors leading into the front lobby. He knelt behind one of the stone arch windows and trained the rifle on the bend in the driveway. I had never seen Uncle shoot anybody, but I knew he’d do it in a second if the wrong person came into view. Harryette, who had been cleaning a basket of pine nuts, saw what was happening. She grabbed a shotgun off the rack and ran to the loading dock at the back of the hotel. I’d never seen Harryette shoot anybody either, but she was at least as mean as Uncle, and a lot jumpier. Me, I’d have rather come in the front way.

I got an extra rifle from the cabinet and waited with it behind Uncle, ready to hand it to him if he ran out of bullets. This was our Defense plan. Shelter, water, food, defense—those were the four things Uncle drilled into us again and again.

Just before the vehicle came into sight, the driver honked his horn three times, and I saw Uncle’s shoulders drop down, the tension gone out of him. The three honks meant it was Hap Gordon, the trader. But Uncle kept the gun sticking out the window until he could see the dusty, dinged-up body of Hap Gordon’s Jeep poke its nose around the bend. Hap’s Jeep was almost fifty years old, same as Uncle’s Land Rover. The old twentieth-century engines were easier to fix.

We all ran out to greet him. Hap showed up once a month or so with medical supplies and other assorted trade items. You never knew what he would have. One time he had a case full of cigars. Uncle bought a box and stunk up the hotel for weeks. Another time Hap sold us a pony, which didn’t last as long as the cigars. The wolves got him.

Hap climbed out of the Jeep. He had a beard this time, but otherwise looked the same as always: small and wiry with squinty blue eyes, wearing jeans, a checkered flannel shirt, and a beat-up old straw hat over long gray and black hair tied in a ponytail.

Emory, a Survivor who traveled with Hap, got out of the passenger side. Emory was the opposite of Hap: tall, thick, wide-eyed, and, like all Survivors, totally bald—no eyebrows, no nose hairs, nothing. His face was slack and sorrowful, which was normal for him. Both his skin and his eyes were the color of wet earth. According to Hap, Emory could talk when he had something to say, but I’d never heard him speak a word. Mostly he just stood around looking sad and dopey. He had survived the Flu without losing any of his senses, but it had taken something else out of him.

But it wasn’t Hap or Emory that interested me. It was the smaller creature climbing from the back of the Jeep.

This time, Hap had brought along a kid.

Hap said to the kid, Tim, this is the boy I was telling you about. His name is C. J. They call him Ceej. Hap smiled at me. Ceej, this is my son, Tim.

Next thing I knew, Hap and Uncle and Emory were walking into the house, leaving me with this weird-looking, green eyed, big-eared kid. Tim was the first kid I’d seen since Harryette and I had come to the Grand Canyon. I didn’t know what to do, so I just stood there and scowled at him. He scowled right back.

What I did next was really stupid and I don’t know why I did it. Who knows why kids do the things they do? I picked up a rock and threw it at him.

I missed.

Tim said, Now it’s my turn. He bent over and scooped up a rock about the size of a raven’s egg.

I ran away as fast as I could. I got to my secret place up in the top floor of the old Hopi House gift shop and just hid there with all the spooky kachina dolls and spider webs and moth-eaten blankets until, an hour or